Tuesday, November 29, 2016

How The Epidemic Of Fake News She Helps Generate For Once Bites Even Amanda Knox In The Tail

Fake News Has Been Knox’s Main Weapon

Amanda Knox has been in the news a great deal recently, riding the crest of a PR-driven “exoneration” campaign

Currently this barrage of fake news culminates with the Netflix film six years in the making which was released worldwide on streaming media in Sept 2016. In the film, the factors that led to her so-called ‘wrongful conviction’ (she claims) included Nick Pisa’s tabloid reportage in that most middle class of UK “comics” the crucifix-and-garlic Daily Mail.

The Lurid Caricatures Resulting, UK Version

A paper much loved for its doomladen headlines, to the extent that the Guardian’s pop hackette, Julie Burchill, famously nicknamed it ‘THE DAILY HORROR’, wherein the non-Guardian-reading masses could immerse themselves daily in an entertaining round of ‘illegal immigrants and asylum seekers flooding the country’, ‘family of 27 given 50-roomed mansion’ and that most loved standby of all, ‘Benefit Scroungers’.

Bearded ‘modern parents’ Guardian readers, on the other hand, in their peep-toed sandals and chomping of organic vegetarian nut roasts, lap up bleeding heart eulogies (note there the protest of over 100 of Meredith’s friends) of Simon Hattonstone and other reporters for the wrongfully imprisoned one.

In the Netflix movie there is the plodding Italian Prosecutor, a Dan Brown-style Italian Catholic, with a paranoia about masonic cults and devilish conspiracies, who sees himself (the film makers claim) as Sherlock Holmes.

So that explains his lurid interest in her! Not a shred of evidence she had anything to do with Meredith Kercher’s murder! Yes, it’s all about priggish, obsessive tyrants, still living in the Italian equivalent of the Victorian ages.

Fake News By Donald Trump Confounds Knox

Swept along on a wave of her own lies, see above, we are now entertained by the spectacle of Knox claiming that Donald Trump’s support for her, after her original conviction, only made it worse for her!

Because after all, the Italians were riding on anti-American feelings in convicting her (and Sollecito)! (But not anti-African, as Rudy Guede did do it. That’s quite different.)

Knox is now claiming, in her fervent support for the Democrats’ Hillary Clinton, that she despises Trump for his views on the Central Park Five, whom he still refers to as ‘guilty’, despite their exoneration, as contrasted with her, whom he described as ‘completely innocent’.

She sees racism in his stance. Oh, the irony of Knox who fingered an innocent black man for Meredith’s murder.

Paradoxically, Knox seems to be saying, the Five are innocent and Trump calls them guilty, whereas I am guilty and Trump calls me innocent. Both made because he’s a racist. Really.

Knox vocally states she does not stand with Trump and why should she vote for him, just because he supported her and helped fund her defence?

These are perhaps commendable points. But before we get carried away, whoa! Let’s stop and take a reality check. For the astonishing fact to come out of all of this, is that Knox should indeed be grateful to Republican Trump.

Of course, not to agree with his political views. However, had her conviction been upheld by the Marasca-Bruno Supreme Court, as all the legal experts expected, Trump, as President of the United States has the weapon of refusing her extradition. Not directly, as that is a veto tool for the State Secretary, but that power is there - and the Government of Italy knew about it

Senator Cantwell The First Politician To In Effect Threaten Italy

We saw it highlighted when Maria Cantwell the senator for Seattle (a Democrat) put out a press release, which was propagated globally and rebutted by our Seattle posters demanding of the then-State Secretary Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration that the USA should intervene to free Amanda Knox because of the clear anti-American sentiment of the Italian judicial system, or so she states.

Maria Cantwell even made an appointment to see Hillary Clinton, saying she had been strongly petitioned by friends of Amanda Knox.

Didn’t the makers of the Netflix film Amanda Knox (2016) assert it was the tabloid journalists who had bullied the Italian police and courts? We see immediately that, true, whilst the mass media is intensely powerful in influencing opinion, it doesn’t actually do anything, except reflect social mores. The real movers and shakers being politicians and political advisers.

From day one, Amanda Knox had the full weight of American politicians behind her, and, rather than Nick Pisa being responsible for her conviction, it is surely the likes of Donald Trump and influencers in the US State Department in part responsible for getting her off the charges. It can be readily seen that Knox has a debt of gratitude owing to these shady enforcers behind the scenes.

Tom Ford of The Washington Post writes on 06 Dec 2009:

As angry Americans promised to boycott Italian holidays, wine and food, a vociferous support group calling itself Friends of Amanda Knox urged people to email Barack Obama to ask him to support her appeal.

Maria Cantwell, a US Democrat senator for Washington state has said she plans to bring her own concerns about the trial, including possible anti-Americanism, to the Mrs Clinton’s attention.

Mrs Clinton, the Secretary of State, said on Sunday that she had not yet looked into the case as she had been preoccupied with Afghanistan policy.

She told ABC News: “Of course I’ll meet with Senator Cantwell or anyone who has a concern, but I can’t offer any opinion about that at this time.”

The dastardly Daily Mail publishes this on 8.12.2009:

After the verdicts, Knox’s furious father Curt Knox vowed to fight to clear his daughter’s name and spoke of his ‘anger and disbelief’ at the Italian justice system.

His campaign seems to be gaining support on Capitol Hill. Senator Maria Cantwell, from Washington state, declared there were ‘serious questions about the Italian justice system’.

She said she was concerned there had been an ‘anti-American’ feeling at the trial and said she would be raising her concerns with Mrs Clinton.

‘The prosecution did not present enough evidence for an impartial jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Miss Knox was guilty,’ she said. ‘Italian jurors were allowed to view highly negative news coverage about Miss Knox.’.....

Mrs Clinton was asked about the trial in an appearance on a U.S. news programme. She said: ‘Of course I’ll meet with Senator Cantwell or anyone who has a concern but I can’t offer any opinion about that at this time.’

She said she had not expressed any concerns to the Italian government. Last night, Knox’s Italian lawyer distanced himself from the senator’s claims. Luciano Ghirga said: ‘That’s all we need, Hillary Clinton involved. I have the same political sympathies as Hillary but this sort of thing does not help us in any way.’

Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini said: ‘This senator should not interfere in something she has no idea about. I am happy with how the trial went.’

Enter the American cavalry. Two years after first ranting at Italian justice, near the end of the Hellmann appeal Donald Trump tweets this:

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump

Everyone should boycott Italy if Amanda Knox is not freed—-she is totally innocent.

“I helped the family out — I felt very, very badly for that family and for her — I never thought she did it,” Trump told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “I watched very intently, like everybody else, and there was just no way she was involved in that.

“And so I did help them out — I feel very, very happy about it — in fact, I said boycott Italy until they release her,” Trump said. “It was really an injustice — and I would get on that plane so fast if I were her and get out.”

Van Susteren asked Trump whether he had ever spoken to her parents. Trump said he had and “well, they’re lovely people.”

(Newsmax 4th Oct 2011)

Not That Knox Reigns In Her Own Aggression

Whilst Knox has been complaining loudly about the intervention of Donald Trump the ingrate stalks, taunts and laughs in the face of the Kercher family, who had to struggle financially as John Kercher wrote:

How Foreign Office let us down

We were surprised at the lack of financial help available from the British Government as we dealt with the aftermath of Meredith’s death.

We had received tremendous support from the British Consulate in Florence, which arranged translation facilities and made transport arrangements, but despite our pleas, we did not receive any financial support from the Foreign Office.

A number of MPs campaigned on our behalf for some contribution towards our flights, but their efforts were to no avail.

Indeed, it seemed this was a policy decision, one that did not affect just us, but anybody who had suffered an ordeal such as ours. This lack of help was despite the fact that we were obliged to provide testimonies in court.

Nor could we expect any help from the Italian government. Before Meredith was murdered, EU states had said they would sign an agreement to compensate the families of foreign nationals who were victims of a violent crime committed in their country.

However, of all the states, Italy failed to sign the agreement in time.

Financially we were alone and it made the business of attending the trial, and seeking justice for Meredith, all the more problematic.

(Daily Mail Femail 15 April 2012)

Guardian Long Chained To PR Of Curt Knox & Marriott

The Guardian has been the most single-minded of any newspapers anywhere in giving Amanda Knox, in particular, a sympathetic ear. Nick Richardson in a reader comment wrote:

From the outset the innocentisti accused the colpevolisti of anti-Americanism. Following the trial the US senator Maria Cantwell wrote to Hillary Clinton to alert her to the anti-Americanism at work in the courtroom – though Sollecito, an Italian, was being tried too.

Was there anti-American sentiment among the colpevolisti? The resentment, even, of a former great imperial power towards the current hegemon? Almost certainly. But the anti-Italian sentiment flowing in the other direction has been just as concentrated.

The managers of Knox’s downfall have come in for savage caricature: Giuliano Mignini, a Perugia public prosecutor, has been portrayed as a senile fuddy-duddy; Monica Napoleoni, head of Perugia’s murder squad, a vindictive bully; Patrizia Stefanoni, who was responsible for collecting forensic evidence from the crime scene, has been slammed for incompetence, though at the time of the crime she was well respected in her field.

Cantwell stated that she had “serious questions about the Italian justice system”, though the state she represents, Washington, currently holds eight people on death row. (Guardian 30.1.2014)

A blogger on My North West astutely ripostes:

I was intrigued by a press release that came out right after the guilty verdict. Senator Maria Cantwell issued a statement in which she said “I am saddened by the verdict and I have serious questions about the Italian justice system and whether anti-Americanism tainted this trial.”

Anti-Americanism??? I can understand how that could have been a factor during the Bush years when the world hated us.

But once we elected Obama, the world fell in love with the United States all over again. We were once again “welcomed into the world community”… and “no longer a pariah on the world stage”…

How could Senator Cantwell suggest that anti-Americanism played a role in this verdict. Barack Obama is our president – THERE IS NO MORE ANTI-AMERICANISM!!!

This high profile case though, brings a particular set of problems for the Obama administration because of the high emotions if elicits on both sides of the Atlantic - not just in Italy and America, but in the United Kingdom too.

The United States and Italy enjoy a successful extradition relationship, with cooperation high on busting organised crime.

It would cause a potential diplomatic row should the president and John Kerry choose not to send Knox to Italy if her appeal fail.

However, on the flip side, Italy may choose not to anger their most powerful ally over such an emotive case.

Knox herself has said that she would not return to Italy and that would only do so, ‘kicking and screaming.’

Regardless, any decision on whether to extradite the 26-year-old from the U.S. is likely months away, at least. Experts have said it’s unlikely that Italy’s justice ministry would request Knox’s extradition before the verdict is finalized by the country’s high court.

If the conviction is upheld, a lengthy extradition process would likely ensue, with the U.S. State Department ultimately deciding whether to turn Knox back over to Italian authorities to finish serving her sentence.

So far the State Department has refused to be drawn on a position regarding the outcome of the Knox re-trial.

Spokesman Patrick Ventrell was asked in March last year what would be the likely decision and only offered that the verdict was still months away.

‘We can’t really comment beyond that,’ Mr Ventrell told reporters according to the Daily Telegraph. ‘We never talk about extradition from this podium in terms of individual cases.’

(31 Jan 2014)

So, we see that the decision to extradite would now have been in Trump’s Secretary of State remit whether or not to extradite and with the power to override any treaty with Italy or US court.

From what we see of Trump’s attitude towards the legally exonerated ‘Central Park Five’ and his public disregard in continuing to label them guilty and to refuse to apologise for the ads he took out in four main newspapers calling for the death penalty, it is a short step to his overriding any guilty verdict by the Italian Supreme Court.

Many observers in Italy are convinced of the invisible hand of the US State Department in the background in the recent shock acquittal of the pair.

In Fact Knox Got Unique Level Of Official Help

Another disturbing aspect is the issue of press releases by Maria Cantwell calling on Italy to free Knox. The question arises, on whose authority was she given permission to issue press releases about sensitive international legal matters?

It seems she then had to petition Hillary Clinton during the appeal process, who prudently declined to comment. Matt Ford of The Atlantic.com analyses the issue in fine detail on 31.1.2014:

Slate’s Justin Peters hypothesized that the U.S. could use Article X of its extradition treaty with Italy, which requires the requesting nation to prove “a reasonable basis to believe that the person sought committed the offense for which extradition is requested,” to block her extradition.

There are more drastic options the U.S. government could take to protect Knox, though. Could Congress and/or President Obama override the extradition treaty with Italy to shield Knox, for example? Yes, says Julian Ku, an international law professor at Hofstra University, but they’re unlikely to do so. “I doubt there will be any need for Congress to intervene,” he said. “If the political winds blow so strongly in favor of Knox, Secretary [of State John] Kerry has all the authority he needs to keep her in the U.S.”

But even if Italy does request Knox’s extradition, Kerry can still simply refuse regardless of whether there are legal problems, says Ku. “It would be a real diplomatic blow, and a bad policy decision in my view, but neither illegal nor unconstitutional.”

Peter Quennell of TJMK channeling John Kercher (see quote above) posted this earlier this year on US v UK governmental support.

Compare with how the UK government reacted after Meredith died. Basically it looked the other way. Many in Italian justice were amazed at how totally disinterested the UK government was in the case in all the years since Meredith’s death.

The US government sprang into action to help Knox and to make sure she was treated right, though there was no proof the Italians would do anything but. They found her a Rome lawyer with good English (Carlos Dalla Vedova) and monitored all her court sessions and her four years in Capanne.

This came at a probable cost of over half a million dollars. And that is just the public support. Nobody ever said “the Federal budget cannot stand this”.

The extent of the British government in pushing justice for Meredith and her family? Exactly zero over the years.

Nothing was ever paid toward the legal costs or the very high travel costs of the Kercher family to be in court as the family finances ran into the ground. Nobody from the Foreign Office in London or the UK Embassy in Rome observed in court except in Florence, just the once.

So Hothead Knox Distances From Hothead Trump

In more recent weeks Knox made a powerful denunciation of Trump in the wake of Clinton’s presidential election defeat.

Knox went on to say that Trump called for the death penalty to be reinstated in New York during the Central Park Five case.

Is It Because I Is White?

“Even now, he views (the suspects) as guilty, though they were exonerated when the true perpetrator, a serial rapist, confessed to the crime,” she wrote. “Why did Trump defend me and condemn them? Is it because I was an American on trial in a foreign country? Is it because I’m a white woman?”

So, when Amanda Knox declares her opposition to Trump, are we to take her seriously? Any more so than her claim it was, ‘Nick Pisa wot got me jailed’?

Knox has had all kinds of senior and anonymous political figures involved in her rescue from justice: Cantwell, Kerry, Clinton, Ventrell, President elect Donald Trump, and faceless officers of the US State department, the latter of whom appear to have issued a press release to the global media, circa 31 Mar 2015, that they would refuse to extradite.

We need to ask, on whose authority were all these press releases circulated? It kinda takes your breath away when Knox claims – and as reported in the national press – that she is not ‘standing by Trump’.

To claim firstly that the likes of Nick Pisa is more powerful than US politicians really exposes the manipulative lies of Knox and the Netflix film makers.

Donald Trump is reported in the Italian press in recent days as being ‘bitter’ about Knox’s comments about his donation towards her legal costs, and who can blame him? Sure, she doesn’t need to share his views, but a little gratitude may have been the better part of valour.

Law And Order And Donald Trump

Consider Trump and his views otherwise on law and order. The Washington Post interviewed Kevin Richardson, one of the Central Park Five on 8 Oct 2016

Trump became a part of this widely reported and closely followed crime story when, two weeks after the teens were arrested, he spent a reported $85,000 placing full-page ads in all four major New York daily newspapers.

“Just like those ads, that speech was a call for extreme action based on a whole set of completely false claims. It seems,” Richardson said, “that this man is for some strange reason obsessed with sex and rape and black and Latino men.”

This week, when confronted again with just how wrong he was about the Central Park Five, Trump not only refused to acknowledge widely reported and well-known facts or the court’s official actions in the case.

He did not simply refuse to apologize: He described the men as guilty, and then demonstrated, once again, that he is a master at the dark art of using long-standing racial fears, stereotypes and anxieties to advance his personal and political goals.

He used the Central Park Five to differentiate himself from his political opponent. He stoked support for solutions inconsistent with the law. And he refused to admit any error….

Wise — who served the longest term of all the wrongfully convicted teens and eventually crossed paths with the real Central Park rapist in prison, setting off a chain of events that got the convictions tossed out — said the content of Trump’s campaign is really a continuation of those 1989 ads.

The Washington Post also interviewed Yusef Saleem, on 12 Oct 2016

At the time, our families tried to shield us from what was going on in the media, but we still found out about Trump’s ads. My initial thought was, “Who is this guy?” I was terrified that I might be executed for a crime I didn’t commit.

Another man, Matias Reyes, eventually confessed to the rape and was definitively linked to the crime through DNA. Because of this, we were exonerated in 2002. New York City paid us $41 million in 2014 for our false imprisonment. (As is customary in such settlements, the city did not admit liability.)

Trump has never apologized for calling for our deaths. In fact, he’s somehow still convinced that we belong in prison. When the Republican nominee was recently asked about the Central Park Five, he said, “They admitted they were guilty.”

In a statement to CNN, Trump wrote: “The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. [= This applies to Knox, her confession and Sollecito. ~ KG] The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same.”

(Meili, for her part, told CNN in 2003: “I guess there are lots of theories out there, but I just don’t know. . . . I’ve had to come to peace with it by saying: ‘You know what? I’m just not going to know.’ )

It’s further proof of Trump’s bias, racism and inability to admit that he’s wrong. When I heard Trump’s latest proclamation, it was the worst feeling in the world. I couldn’t breathe….. I realize, too, that I’m not the only victim. Trump has smeared dozens of people, with no regard for the truth.”

Some Final Commentary

Trump’s intervention in the Central Park Five case illustrates how imprudent it is for a politician to attempt to intervene in legal cases. He can have had very little idea of the impact of the huge body of evidence presented before the jury.

Trump’s gung-ho White Knight charge-to-the-rescue of a fellow German-American - and backed by hard funding - is based on irrationality, emotion and jingoism, “the last refuge of a scoundrel”.

How dangerous and meddlesome for Cantwell to demand a defendant be released, regardless of the facts of the case. How reckless and patronising, too, were Trump’s interventions.

Okay, Knox doesn’t stand by Trump today. But it’s directly thanks to the likes of the Lizard King she is walking free today.

I am the Lizard King
I can do anything
I can make the earth stop in its tracks
I made the blue cars go away ~ Jim Morrison

A while back, I posted in Comments on the rumor long rampant in Perugia that “someone” paid $2 million to have Judge Chiari replaced by Judge Hellmann.

If anyone did make that payment, I hope Judge Hellmann refunded it after the Supreme Court bounced his verdict. No wonder Trump was ticked at Italy.

Note this: of all the numerous judges that handled the case, only THREE were not competent to handle murder trials, and all three were appointed by nefarious means, and all three did Knox etc quite a favor.

1. Judge Hellmann.
2. Judge Marasca.
3. Judge Bruno.

Seemingly without exception the true professionals in the Italian system look down on them, so they paid a price.

The State Department ran up a bill of an estimated half a million dollars with all those attendances as “observers” at trial and appeal (a consular officer had to come from Rome) and “monitoring” of Knox in prison for 5 years.

Was this illegal? Why it could be is that the State Department & Embassies have a firm rule: hands off helping any American in trouble if drugs were involved.

Both Sollecito and Knox admitted drugs WERE involved and of course the cops and prosecution knew about Knox’s tame drug dealer who she kept in touch with daily up to arrest.

At trial Sollecito lawyer Maori tartly said that Knox was using cocaine on the night. Her must have got that from Sollecito. It was not challenged.

Cocaine is the general presumption anyway, as Knox smelled strongly of cat pee (a cocaine indicator) when the cops arrived despite two claimed showers within the past 12 hours.

Netflix of course made all of this clear… oh no, they “forgot” to.

We have had half a dozen drug experts telling us they “see” cocaine use here. This is why Judge Micheli was adamant that police and prosecutors not go there, he wanted no leniency:

The lack of help for Meredith’s family and the disinterest shown in a British subject’s brutal murder in a foreign land is an indelible stain on the government of these islands. Truly shameful.

I suspect the obsequious nature of our (the UK’s) relationship with the USA may well have been at the heart of it. Terrified to cause offence or be seen to be in any way advocating for the jailing of a US citizen, the U.K. Government chose to look the other way.

I mentioned this in emails to Krissy and she said by all means add it, but it is a fine post as it is and many have already read it.

***

The US Federal Government is unusual if not unique in having thousands of political appointees at the top. Not just the director or permanent secretary, a whole lot of assistants and deputies too.

They dont have much to do and they often know little about the programs they help to oversee. So if anyone turns up with an axe to grind or favor to ask their doors are open to this.

Then they set about actioning the request, especially if it involves also advancing or protecting their party and the boss (in this case Hillary Clinton and John Kerry) who may often not even be put in the loop. It seems pretty certain that this at minimum is what happened here.

***

1. See Ergon’s great investigation into how an employee took a pro-Knox stand and may have swayed those Assistants or the big boss higher up.

4. Retired judge Michael Heavey has been exceptionally exercised over Knox and has campaigned incessantly. He was reprimanded for using official letterheads but kept at it anyway and presented his loony conspiracy theories (with Steve Moore and John Douglas, below) both in a rented room at the Congress, with someone from State there; and also, we believe, at State.

The Wayback Machine company and presumably most of its servers are in San Francisco. But in view of threats to the Internet they have announced they are mirroring all their servers to other servers in Canada.

Meanwhile following last week’s statement from Washington state senator Maria Cantwell, in which she said she had ‘serious concerns’ about the Italian legal system, voters in her state have posted an open letter to her on a website set up in memory of Meredith, asking her to think again.

The letter, on True Justice For Meredith Kercher, reads: ‘We are all regular voters who live in the Seattle area.

‘We think we increasingly mirror a very large minority or even a majority of cool-headed but concerned Seattle-area voters who would like to see her speaking up for truth and real justice in this case. And for the rights of the true victim.

‘We are not running a campaign. We don’t think Senator Cantwell needs hard persuasion. We think once she immerses herself deeply in the real facts, those facts will tell her the right thing to do.’

Ironically it was Nick Pisa who (correctly) reported that. He will confirm that we havent ever been in touch, we dont know his email address.

KrissyG, Knox sees dollar signs, she has her eyes on Central Park Five’s multi-million payout. If only she could figure out a way to dig that kind of money out of Italy, that’s her angle.

That’s her jealous interest in the Central Park Five who I also believe as does Trump, are guilty 100% guilty, evil and feral. We know Knox is guilty despite her acquittal, same with CP5.

Thank you for pointing out Knox’s strange way of thanking Donald Trump for his financial help to her family and her defense. Wow. Just wow. True Knox. Now maybe Trump realizes how Meredith was treated.

I voted for Donald Trump. I support many of his policies, but long ago when he touted Knox’s innocence I said to myself, there’s a case of a man having his head turned by what he sees as a pretty female.

Trump and his beauty pageants. I support many of his proposals but he is not a saint, that’s certain.

I agree with KrissyG that Trump should never have leapt into the case so blindly nor spoken out for Knox nor funded her family. Ditto for the hasty support of uninformed Senator Cantwell.

Knox always tries to tie herself to someone high profile.

Now she disses Trump to stir controversy, since he has become President-elect. She’s afraid of becoming irrelevant. Knox is addicted to the spotlight as she always was. She was jealous of Meredith’s brief moment in the “Some Say” music video. So her answer was to make a hideous ghoulish music video with Hands of Time.

John Kercher wrote a book about Meredith, so Knox wrote a book about herself. She’s competitive which caused the friction with her roommate whom she attacked out of envy, as Meredith’s mother summed up as motive: Meredith was everything she (Knox) was not. She can’t bear to be surpassed, her ego is enormous. But I’d say Meredith easily surpassed her, and Trump as well, and she’s displeased that he thinks “exoneration” status does not the whole truth make.

Trump may look much more deeply into Knox’s so-called innocence, if he only had the time.

@Hopeful I recall the great interest in the Central Park Five at the time. The press spun it as these marauding youths being obviously guilty, so we all assumed they were. I haven’t really looked into the case in any great depth, so feel unqualified to offer an opinion as to their guilt or not.

I did look up the news pages and noted the following:

“In 2002, after Salaam had served seven years in prison, Matias Reyes, a violent serial rapist and murderer already serving life inside, came forward and confessed to the Central Park rape. He stated that he had acted by himself. A re-examination of DNA evidence proved it was his semen alone found on Meili’s body, and just before Christmas that year, the convictions against each member of the Central Park Five were vacated by New York’s supreme court.” from: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/17/central-park-five-donald-trump-jogger-rape-case-new-york

So, whilst Trump might feel it in his bones his opinion is right, it’s rash, in my view, for him to ignore the court findings in that case or the Italy one. I was alarmed Trump was calling for Korey Wise, the oldest of the Five to be publicly hanged in Central Park. Puzzled to see they all seemed to have been fifteen or fourteen, I searched for Wise’s age and was stunned to see it was sixteen at the time. It really is lucky the victim did not die, or it would have been life without parole, had not Reyes been caught. Or had New York had the death penalty…

Reyes said he was the only one, and sure enough, only his DNA was found. So we have to question Trump’s judgement in continuing to insist the five are guilty. Or that Knox and Sollecito are innocent, when no court has found that to be so, having been convicted by both merits courts and only acquitted on a suspect paragraph II ‘insufficient evidence’ get out clause, by a dodgy judge.

I was totally addicted to the The Apprentice USA, and Trump seemed very fair on that programme and a good judge of character.

Would I have voted for him? No. I didn’t like his nastiness. I admired the way Hillary kept her composure as he intimidated her by walking around her and hurled abuse during their debates.

US politics are far to the right of anything we have in the UK. Nobody here talks of God and Christianity, nor vows to ban Islam. From our perspective, we can’t imagine any politician running off their mouth the way Trump and Cruz does. Our own Nigel Farage seemed a wimp next to Trump. Normally he struts around annoying everybody. Next to Trump, on the rally podium, he looked like someone who’d get sand kicked in his face.

Although I am conservative by nature, I also hate injustice and bigotry, so I cannot bear to vote for them.

Knox wants to be redeemed - not because she feels any remorse - so she goes out campaigning as a means of trying to get people to like her.

At the moment, she has a trendy Democrat personna. With Meredith, she was the fascist thug who felt entitled to victimise her for daring to snub her and scold her for her lack of personal hygiene. She was furious.
Seething with anger.

After the murder, the pair acted as though Meredith’s murder was just a nothing, an annoying inconvenience and, hey ‘sh!t happens…’

Now they’ll want their pound of flesh, not happy with an acquittal alone. Knox knows she got off because of a bent system, that’s why she can see the oppressiveness of Trump’s views, even though she herself benefitted from them.

Sollecito is more straightforward, and merely sent Trump his polite congratulations in a Tweet.

@KrissyG, Good word: “Knox wants to be redeemed—not because she feels any remorse—so she goes out campaigning as a means of trying to get people to like her.”

It’s absolutely true. She’s trying to rehabilitate her image. The remorse is for how she destroyed her image. She wants support for her delusions that she was perfect before Perugia, and perfect afterwards.
I respect your views on Hillary (she is more patient and practiced in debate than shoot-from-the-hip Trump, I must agree, although I don’t like her politics.)

I also concur with your opinion that politics is much more to the right in USA than UK, and this 2016 presidential campaign was particularly rude, crude, and malevolent, appalling at times. And this long comment is the last aside I’ll make about politics because it’s so divisive. However since Trump was involved with the Knox case long before the election, it bears some discussion about him.

We will have to agree to disagree on the Central Park Five. I think Trump is especially incensed against them because he helped rebuild the Wollman Skating Rink in Central Park after years of bureaucratic delays. Also, the Plaza Hotel he once owned stands facing lovely Central Park. Trump is emotionally attached to NYC and the park was made dangerous by gangs of lawless “youths”. NYPD were made fearful of controlling them due to lawsuits for police brutality, also flipped convictions followed by civil lawsuits were enough to break the city’s budget.

IMHO, that’s why Trump persisted in resentment against the CP5 and all their ilk who ruin a civilized city for all people. Yes, Reyes’ was later the only DNA found, but I won’t argue the case, nor do I know it thoroughly. There was corroboration among CP5 with details they gave in confessing their attack, and other evidence, to convince of guilt, IMO.

Knox MAY be intrigued with the airbrush job that’s been done on the Central Park Five, where the wolfpack scenario was discarded after Reyes “confessed” he did a lone wolf attack.

Knox wants Rudy to do the same for her and Sollecito.

Reyes was threatened behind bars in 2001 with violence if he didn’t take the rap for his accomplices (which opened the door to their big money lawsuits).

Reyes waited until statute of limitations had expired, then he confessed. Getting other minority felons off for their crimes made him a cellblock hero. Reyes’ lie allowed the lawsuits for wrongful prosecution to begin.

This was the entire aim of Reyes’ lie; he himself was a serial rapist. A lie was nothing to him.

Knox is intrigued with the idea of such a false confession from Rudy that might release her from all taint. I don’t know how she could wangle money out of it if he did so, but others may know how.

Despite the fact the Central Park Jogger, Ms. Meili, will never be the same again after the carnage inflicted on her and from which several doctors barely saved her life, she did not die like Meredith did.

I think Knox is concerned with the “what ifs” of her attack on Meredith: what if they had let her live and tried to weather the legal storm, perhaps confessing everything rather than forging lies and denying?

Would Knox have fared better under Italy’s system if charged with assault rather than murder, or was Meredith too far gone physically from blood loss so that the decision to spare her was not theirs to make?

The Central Park jogger is alive, but she is altered forever. Would Meredith have been so, perhaps even a vegetable, after her injuries and oxygen deprivation to her brain, her organs? Knox must mull over the decisions she and her two guys made that night in Perugia, wondering what if.

What if Meredith had lived, would Knox have been any worse off even if Meredith testified against her? At least it wouldn’t have been a murder charge.

How many years might the evil trio in Perugia have served in prison for an attack had they simply confessed and shown remorse? Fewer than the four years they served in Capanne?

They silenced the only witness but did that really help matters for Knox? Knox must surely weigh these thoughts over and over in flashbacks and rumination.

Then she sees Central Park 5 getting bigger $$$ than she did, for an even more brutal attack in some ways yet allowing their victim to live. They still wiggled out of the assault conviction by the latterday lies of Reyes. (his M.O. was to rape young women inside buildings then blind them with a knife so they couldn’t identify him)

The Central Park Five also had a movie made about them, similar to Netflix movie about Knox.

The CP5 movie by Ken and Sarah Burns created a fairytale of a single attacker.

Knox is interested in how a rampaging group of approximately 40 Hispanic and black youths who menaced, attempted to beat, assault, and robbed people in their path on a frenzied night in the park in the early 1980s (70% of whom were let go) and 5 of whom were convicted of riot, robbery, and assault of jogger David Lewis and jogger John Loughlin as well as poor Ms. Meili—how this mob was reduced to “a single attacker” in Meili’s case.

The male joggers were beaten savagely as well. They used a pipe or metal bar on Ms. Meili.

The prosecution suggested that as many as 14 perpetrators attacked Ms. Meili. How this group attack was then airbrushed down to a one and only lone assailant, thanks to rapist Reyes’ lies, may be what fascinates Knox.

She sees that the public will believe anything, given time.

The CP5 (all except Yusef Salaam, although he said things that incriminated him) all confessed to the attacks and knew details of the crime that confirmed each other.

Knox wants to rewrite history, her history in Perugia and she wants the public’s assent and applause. She’s a storyteller and an actress and truth is not her thing.

Well I can’t claim to know any of the facts but I read this from The Daily Wire -

“Furthermore, Kerwick pointed out that there was other evidence implicating the Central Park Five:

Multiple videotaped confessions of “the Five”; the presence of semen, blood, and hair on all of the suspects; a scratch on Kevin Richardson’s neck that, in the company of his father, he admitted he received by Meili; and several witness accounts confirmed for the police that the vermin who Ken Burns would years later make into martyrs were as guilty as sin itself of initiating and facilitating an attack against Trisha Meili that nearly cost the poor woman her life.”

It seems that basically all the prosecution had were the confessions and reading these it is surprising that not one of the five left any semen or DNA evidence on the person or clothing of Trisha Meili.

Nor is it said, despite the presence of “semen, blood and hair on all of the suspects” that any of this belonged to Meili. When were the 5 arrested - immediately afterwards? Nor that there was ID evidence from the “several witness accounts” or that these were specific to the attack on Meili.

Ms Meili herself had no recollection of the attack, not even as to whether there were multiple attackers or not.

This is not to say that there were not multiple attackers nor that the CP5 were not part of the dreadful goings on in the Park. However the Charges were specific and related to the attack on Meili for which there was precious little, if any, corroborative evidence for their retracted confessions.

Vermin they may be but the proof that they were guilty as charged does not seem to me, on the basis of the above, to meet the BARD standard. Had they been white do you think that they would have been convicted?

@ Hopeful. I am not surprised you voted for Trump but that is a brave admission to make.

I’ve provisionally gone with the complete absence of DNA that freed them in that case, I think there was no contamination or mislaid swabs and quite rarely ever is.

This article on Trump and the Five by Sarah Burns (who Hopeful mentioned) in the NY Times 6 weeks ago talks of an epidemic of wrongful convictions here - seemingly a real epidemic, not the supposed one in Italy - which Trump missed.

Here is what was one of the underlying dynamics at the time of the crime - there always are some (as in Perugia right after Meredith was killed) although one sometimes has to look hard.

Thirty years ago Central Park was one of the quite numerous places in the city (NYC is a city of 8 million in a greater city area of 18 million) one would be iffy about walking through even in daylight. (Harlem where the boys lived was even iffier.)

This despite the fact that the homes of numerous millionaires look out upon the park. Trump has several properties including where he lives looking on to Central Park.

For some social and economic reasons (higher incomes, higher rents, more jobs, less crack cocaine) and different police systems the crime rate has come down and come down to where NYC is now safer than a lot of other cities in the US. In Harlem dozens of new buildings have gone up.

This has in particular made it safer for women, even women jogging alone at night. So any crime that rocks new perceptions of safety and forces people to change their regimes and property values take a hit gets a lot of hard-line attention and much exposure in the press.

Had this crime whatever precisely it was occurred in some other parts of the city where safety still had a way to go and no millionaires across the road, there’d have been much less haste, and it might have been a three-day wonder in the media at most with a good chance the boys could walk..

@Peter Quennell, I celebrate the dropping crime rate in NYC. That’s great news. I remember the Charles Bronson movie “Death Wish”, its awful vibe of out of control crime painted of NYC a few decades back. Thank goodness things are getting better with improvements in Harlem, too. That’s all such good news.

As to the Meili attack, not to blame her for the evil of others (and I like the term “provisionally” on any decision about CP5, I am by no means well informed on it, my first instinct is to accept their guilty confessions and trust NYPD police, but better ten guilty go free than one innocent man imprisoned, for final good of entire justice system and trust),

but back to Ms. Meili: it’s a fact that most crime does happen after dark, discretion is half of wisdom. Even in the safest cities it is unwise for a woman alone to go out late at night.

I was taught to stay out of dark corners if one doesn’t want to get bitten by spider. As a young woman I did not always heed that advice, thankfully I had only one close call with a would-be assailant whom I verbally threatened in indignant ire (I was quite bold back then, in my early 20s.)

I shook off his incredibly tight steel grip on my arm. He loosened his grip for a moment shaken by my irate stern words perhaps (he was black, that’s a fact), and I fled like a deer with heart pounding with panic returning to my college women’s house where I lived with a group of fellow students called “Outreach For Christ”.

That relatively small scare cured me of late night lingering in our small downtown. I’d stopped by a silly pool hall. I liked the look of the pool tables and had never played. It wasn’t a seedy crowd but I was followed down the sidewalk as I left. I had no situational awareness since mine was a very small safe town. His crass approach was “let me walk with you,” as he sidled up beside me to lay his steel vise grip on my arm. It was all over in a flash, thanks to grace alone, but I have still never been able to wear a certain color of clothes I had on that night.

The Central Park joggers, their late jogs were probably the only time folks had after work to do fitness. Ah, the era of jogging and salad bars and workout videos, the 80s liberation.

@hopeful I didn’t know any of that. I am now going to order the book by the victim, Trisha Meili _I am the Central Park Jogger_ to find out more.

You are bullseye with:

“I think Knox is concerned with the “what ifs” of her attack on Meredith: what if they had let her live and tried to weather the legal storm, perhaps confessing everything rather than forging lies and denying?”

Yes, that’s it. That and her automatic assumption that anyone claiming to be ‘wrongly convicted’ must be so, or at least that she should automatically support them in that it indirectly supports her own case. It’s a manipulation of hegemony.

What you say about Reyes taking the rap as a favour to subvert true justice towards the several real perps, puts me in mind of some of Kathleen Zellner’s clients, (wrongful conviction lawyer who has already reaped $3m in compensation for her wronged clientele this year), several of whom have made ‘death bed confessions’ conveniently - some might say -taking the rap for murders, other persons had been incarcerated for. Net gain: the deathbedder dies, what’s one or two further murders on their charge sheet anyway, the other guy/s get exonerated and Zellner reaps her harvest.

I’ve only just now discovered that the $40m compensation award was only as recent as 2014, so the Amanda Knox interest in the case begins to make sense.

The instinct of fear is one of your biggest allies. It’s an instinct passed down through evolution. It’s what makes birds fly away at a rustle or a deer dart off into the woods.

We are now in a society where we are encouraged to smile and be polite to complete strangers who strike up conversations, ask the time, directions or even for change. When we feel that icy finger of fear, it is always wise to listen to it. Don’t humour the fear rouser. Cross the road, walk faster, have your hand on the hatpin or pepper spray, but have a contingency plan. Many of the perps we read about simply knocked on their victim’s door and were politely let in, to use the phone, drink water, like perhaps poor Meredith, and next you know you are face to face with the horror of Guede, Knox and Sollecito waving knives (wearing masks?), forcibly restrained, or someone like this guy here: http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/row/baerf.htm

Could Meredith have anticipated the event? Probably not, but if only she’d packed her things and left as soon as things got nasty with Knox. We know she was avoiding her, for sure.

I too was a great fan of Charles Bronson vigilante films, never tired of them. He was a legend.

Seems odd that Amanda would align herself in any way with the CP5 as this invites comparison of her case to theirs.

CP5 and Amanda were both convicted by a jury that heard all the evidence. Amanda twice.

In both cases court officials dismissed police misconduct and mistreatment of the suspects. The “exoneration” of Amanda and CP5 in the final analysis was shaky at best. The big differences is the CP5 thugs extorted the taxpayers for millions. Amanda hasn’t done that yet to the Italians.

Trump was correct when he proclaimed the CP5 guilty since he only repeated the jury verdict. I think he called for the death penalty in NY. In some crimes the death penalty is appropriate.

Amanda played her cards wrong. She believed the propaganda in liberal Seattle that a Hillary landslide win was at hand. In Seattle contrary opinions to liberal orthodoxy are not allowed.

Amanda not only threw Trump off the bus, she denigrated him as well. I suspect she realizes her mistake, but she’ll never admit it. Here was a billionaire who came to her aid in time of need and she publicly disrespected him. Had she said nothing or at least thanked him for his help, publicly, she’d have an “in” with the U.S. President.

She could have used his help. As a convicted felon, she may have trouble getting a passport. If she does some countries might refuse to let her in.

Millions of Trump supporters, myself among them, correctly see Bill and Hillary Clinton as yet to be indicted and convicted felons. In addition we didn’t wish that our country turn into a bigger failure than the UK where no first and second amendment rights exist and where unrestricted Muslims immigrants now control the big cities. Nor do we wish to turn the U.S. into a Narco-State of Northern Mexico.

Hillary is a horrible speaker and a terrible debater. Trump the amateur wrestled her to a draw and he never debated for high stakes before.

It’s amazing that Amanda threw away her best “Trump” card. Hey, Amanda, in a few weeks President Trump will be running the State Department and the DOJ. You, Amanda, could have used that help.

I invite Amanda to watch this video about Trump and people he helped who turn disloyal.

Maybe it’s just me, but Amanda at 29 is still fascinated with Harry Potter and mythical characters and magic. She has said she wants to marry and have kids. Concerning the latter, she better hop to it.

Interesting comment. Knox should have realised that if there was monkey business in the State Department, as we believe (see above) Trump’s appointees there can find out.

You say 2 juries heard the evidence? Actually a problem in sustaining Knox’s guilt throughout the Italian process was in fact that that only one jury, the 2009 trial jury, heard all the evidence set out.

Thereafter, the appeal juries only heard about the points that were appealed. At the Hellmann appeal in 2011 the prosecution was reduced to a very small role. In fact Prosecutor Comodi did the unprecedented and complained to the press that their hands were being tied by the judges and this rule.

The Nencini appeal in 2013 was still a defense appeal by Sollecito and Knox, but the Supreme Court and Florence judges and prosecution made sure that the jury got a better grasp of the whole case.

The final Fifth Chambers appeal in 2015 bounced back to something like the Hellmann appeal, with defense lawyer Bongiorno in particular going on and on and on about supposed police malfeasance and lack of evidence.

The Perugia and Florence prosecutors were not even there!

We have often remarked that this seems pretty daft. Why have juries at appeal levels at all? The Renzi legal reforms would have rolled this automatic appeal right back to something like the US’s and UK’s so the courts have a much smaller load.

Renzi’ss legal reforms seemed to attract no great fire and would have helped victims and business a lot. Pity he over-reached in what looked like a power grab in other areas just when trust in him to produce results was going down.

It’s perhaps helpful to repeat what most of us know. Knox is a serial accuser…

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